Just a note to the gentleman who suggests that everyone is free to sell his or her labour in precisely the manner s/he prescribes.

At their begginnings, men and women are free and equal. However, in their everyday lives they will, out of necessity, enter into relationships with each other in order to produce the means of existence. This they do through the medium of commodity exchange.

The problem arises when a labourer, a free and equal individual, finds that the means of producing these commodities are privately owned-almost exclusively. I'm talking about factories, banks, corporations, mines and farms, the ownership in these means of production and in the commodities therein produced being protected by private law.

S/he then finds that s/he must sell his/her labour to the owner of the means of production in order to produce the means of exchange.

Or he could choose your suggestion, and a very intelligent and informed one it is at that-to fish, hunt or make nice little trinkets to sell to tourists like the native americans are forced to becuase their land was stolen (sorry, manifestly destined to be explored and developed, and so much better it looks too!!.

The fact of the matter is that material factors outwith the control of the individual concerned will necessarily limit the choices available to him/her when s/he udnertakes the task of obtaining the means of existence, and to treat their decision as being informed by freedom is ridiculous; to protect this relationship in law by treating the parties as formally equal entirely unjust.

In certain circumstances the only option available is sale of labour to a sweatshop factory owner (or the fishing etc, you muppet). THAT is the material ECONOMIC condition that the Gap EXPLOITS (not exclusively) and they should be pilloried for doing so. As should the Capitalist mode of production which creates the condition in the first place.